


silence where you should be

by Areiton



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Bad Alpha Scott McCall (Teen Wolf), Bad Friend Scott McCall (Teen Wolf), Grief/Mourning, M/M, POV Peter Hale, POV Second Person, Peter Hale centric, Suicidal Thoughts, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-08-10 23:03:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16464059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Areiton/pseuds/Areiton
Summary: Stiles dies on a Wednesday, a day completely unremarkable except for this one fact.orStiles dies. And Peter brings him back.





	silence where you should be

**Author's Note:**

> Full warnings at the end. Read with cautions, friends.

Stiles dies on a Wednesday, a day completely unremarkable except for this one fact.

You fought with him, just before he stormed out. You fought with him and you told yourself it was nothing you fought with him all the time--and you always had time to fix it, to tease smiles from him again.

You thought you would.

~*~

Stiles dies on a Wednesday and as you watch his body crumple, you think-- _I haven’t fixed it. He’s still angry._

You watch him fall and you--you’ve lived through losing everything, before.

But you never thought you’d lose _Stiles._

~*~

“I can help him,” you say, again, desperate, and maybe it’s the grief or exhaustion--you don’t know how long it’s been since you watched Stiles crumple in that forest, gut ripped open by  redcap, but you know you are trembling with fatigue and almost out of your mind with grief.

There is a gaping hole in your chest where Stiles should be and the emptiness of it is eating away at what is left of your sanity.

“Please,” you beg, and Scott snarls, the only warning you get before he slams into you.

He’s hitting you, and you think-- _he is such a bad werewolf. He isn’t even using his claws._

Then the force of the blows and repeated slamming of your head into concrete shoves you under, into black oblivion.

~*~

You come to spitting blood, an enraged Alpha trapped behind a circle of mountain ash, and the nightmare you hoped was just that--a nightmare--laid out on Deaton’s cold examination slab.

Stiles.

Your beautiful, brilliant, cruel boy.

Is dead.

“You don’t _touch_ him,” Scott spits, through fangs. “You fucking pervert, stay away from him or I’ll kill you myself.”

“I want to help,” you whisper.

“ _You_ did this,” Scott screams, and you shudder under the weight of that before Deaton sighs and escorts you from the clinic.

~*~

“Can you help him?” Derek says, seriously, and you stare at him, desperate hope curling in your gut. It’s been twelve hours since Deaton kicked you out and the pack has been silent, no word, nothing.

You are still shocked to see your nephew, dark circles under his eyes, looking like he’s aged a decade and for a long moment you don’t answer. He snarls and shoves at you, and you give ground because you can’t not--can’t face his anger in the light of your loss.

_Stiles._

You make a noise and Derek slumps, the color bleeding from his eyes. He stares at you, defeated and plaintive. “Can--can you help him, Uncle?”

~*~

Derek hasn’t called you Uncle since before the fire, and you think of all the times Stiles shoved the two of you together, scent determined and hopeful and your heart breaks a little more.

~*~

“I need--” your voice cracks and you take a stumbling step forward. “I need his body. And space to work.”

Derek  nods. “Meet me at the Sheriff’s house in two hours.”

You watch him as he starts to leave, and you think--maybe.

You think--I can fix this.

You think--Stiles. Stiles. _Stiles._

You watch him go, and you--you drag yourself together, shoving all the grief and raging fury, the edging taste of madness deep deep deep and pack your books and Stiles laptop, herbs and ash and charms, everything you think you might need to do what should be impossible--and then you go to the Sheriff.

~*~

John Stilinski has always struck you as strong. Immovable rock. Looking at him now, his face creased and weathered, his eyes red and shoulders slumped, you realize--he isn’t.

Stiles is the bedrock he built all his strength on, and Stiles--

You push that aside and step inside, and he stares at you with naked hope.

“Can you do it? Derek--he said you could.”

“I brought myself back,” you say, carefully. “But I am supernatural and I came back changed.”

“Stiles--”

“Isn’t human,” you put out, the truth you and Stiles have known for a while even if neither of you have mentioned it, or brought it up to the pack.

“There is--I have the ritual. But it will take time and precision. And I can’t promise he’ll be the same, when he comes back.”

John’s eyes close. “Scott thinks what you bring back will be perverse. Wrong.”

You nod, and your heart squeezes.

If John says no--you won’t.

It might send you right back into the throes of insanity, but you will leave Stiles untouched. He isn’t _yours_.

Not yet.

Maybe not ever.

~*~

“If it were your choice--would you bring him back, even if he were changed?”

“ _Yes._ I would burn the earth to ash and pull him from the flames, if that’s what it took to bring him back.”

~*~

Derek arrives with Stiles carefully laid out in the back of his van, and you--you can’t look. You focus on Derek, his split lip and the fresh claw marks on his arm. He shakes his head, dismissive. “Scott wasn’t happy.”

The sheriff makes a pained noise and you tip your head to the side. “We need to take him somewhere Scott won’t find us.”

They stare at you, eyes glassy with shock and grief and you realize--

This is yours.

To screw up or to save, Stiles is your now.

You take a shaky breath and shove your grief down down down.

“Come on. I have a safe house on the Canadian border,” you say, and slip into the driver’s seat.

~*~

You drive out of Beacon Hills in the dark of night, a dead body in the back and the stink of whiskey to your right, and the sound of your nephew quietly crying mingling with the furious howls of an outraged alpha.

You push it all away, and drive.

~*~

You’re running on coffee and desperation, when you reach the cabin.

You carry Stiles in, while John and Derek sleep in the van, and set him careful on the only table big enough to stretch him out on.

His feet hang off the end.

You frown and go to work.

~*~

When you pass out, it's been almost forty eight hours since Stiles died.

Forty eight hours without his heartbeat, rabbit fast and steady. You want to scream.

You want to crawl on the table with him, curl around his cold body and sob.

You want one more minute, one where you can take it all back, that last stupid fight.

You want one more minute, want to say everything you never said to him.

You let out your breath and it shakes, a shuddery painful thing.

“Don't go too far, darling,” you breathe and then, finally, you sleep.

~*~

Bringing someone back from the dead is a tricky thing.

Tricky and demanding and time consuming.

You spend the first few days putting preservation spells on the body, because it’ll do you no good to bring him back to a decaying husk.

“How long?” John asks, and you shake your head.

“It could be as early as the new moon.”

“Or?”

“It could be the Worm Moon.”

You don’t pause to watch what that does to him.

You can’t let yourself think about Stiles lying dead, his heartbeat silent, body far too still, for almost a year.

You push that down, and go to work.

~*~

Before the fire, when you stood as Talia’s Left Hand, you ate up knowledge. Everything you could get your hands, and a lot you had to bribe borrow or steal--you wanted it all.

You liked to say it kept the pack safer to know everything--and it’s not even untrue.

But the simple fact is that you are curious. You have always been curious. And sitting at the feet of a druid, serving a witch coven, listening to a blood mage whose bed you shared for a year--all of those were idle curiosities at the time. They were ways to fill your days and pass the time.

You are grateful beyond words to those idle curiosities now, as you trace runes around him.

~*~

Some days you spend hours over him, chanting until your hoarse. One day you wrap him in linen and lower him carefully into an ice bath, and hold him there for hours,until your fingers and arms are numb and he emerges blue and so still it makes you shake.

You finish the ritual, trace the runes onto his skin with your blood and mountain ash that makes your skin blister, and don’t say a word to Derek, hovering nearby looking sick.

Later, that night, when you’ve finished the ritual and the blue tinge has slowly faded, you let yourself stumble into the trees and are violently sick.

~*~

Some days there is nothing to do but wait. Those days are the worst, because you can't bear to leave him and you're consumed with what ifs, sitting next to him.

What if you fail? If you do even one thing wrong--that's it. No second chances.

You pet Stiles cold hand and decide to make one more backup plan.

~*~

Derek comes back one afternoon from the closest city and looks at you. “How much longer?”

Your hands falter, just for a second, as you wrap strips of rowan and birch, soaked to bandage like pliability around Stiles. Your hands are aching and splinters are digging into your palms but you carefully keep wrapping Stiles.

“What happened?”

“Scott,” Derek says and you snarl.

~*~

You can feel madness. You remember the sticky cling of it, the scattered disconnect, the way you were _there_ and not, _shattered_.

You feel it, sometimes, when you're sitting next to him and the silence is suffocating.

You feel it now and you _want_ to indulge.

Want to tear apart the idiotic alpha who couldn't keep his pack safe, couldn't protect Stiles.

You snarl when you hear him howl, and shove it down, gasp, “Sheriff.”

~*~

Scott hits the driveway at full-speed and you feel the ripple of the mountain ash shield when he slams into it, feel the way it makes the air shudder. He roars, full throated and furious and you pet a hand down Stiles arm.

“Forgive me,” you whisper.

You can hear Derek shouting at Scott but you know it won't matter.

Scott's beyond reason, beyond any kind of sense and you know--you _know_ how this ends.

“Sweetheart, forgive me,” you press a kiss to his skin--cold, dry, _wrong_ \--and slip out to meet the Alpha.

~*~

Scott is shifted, eyes burning red and furious and you feel your own shift burn through you in response, feel your fangs lengthen and you _want_ to rip him him apart, want to tear into him the way he is fighting to tear into you.

“What did he do! What did he promise, Derek?” Scott screams.

“He can _fix_ it!” Derek shouts.

You step up to the barrier, and the True Alpha snarls, throws himself at you with a furious noise.

You don’t blink. Just stare at him as he pummels himself against the ash line.

“I’ll kill you,” he gasps.

You nod, “But not before I bring him back.”

~*~

Derek leaves.

He gives you an apologetic, tortured look but he goes.

You can’t blame him.

If you could, you would go too.

~*~

Some nights, you are too exhausted, and you fall into bed, fall into oblivion and don’t dream.

Some nights, though.

Some nights you wake screaming, all the ways this could go wrong echoing in your nightmares.

They’re silent. Too silent, a mocking sort of emptiness where his heartbeat should be.

Those nights, you don’t sleep again.

~*~

You call Lydia and knowing you have no right to ask--beg a favor.

~*~

The days wear on and you finally realize--it’s time.

It’s time.

It’s terrifying. You have done everything you can, and now--now you have to believe it’s enough.

~*~

Lydia’s gift sits near you as you lay Stiles on a white sheet and circle him with wolfsbane and mistletoe.

Three small pills, and you know one will do the job.

The other two are insurance.

It steadies your hand, seeing them.

Either way, it ends--he comes back to you, or you go to him.

You lean down and brush a kiss against dry lips.

Either way, it ends.

~*~

Your blood and the Sheriff’s splash in Stiles mouth, Scott’s painted on his skin, and you close your eyes as you chant, the taste of iron heavy in the thick, silent room.

You--

You need this to work. You can’t do this, can’t _live_ without him. You chant and pray, silently, _Stiles. Please._

~*~

His heartbeat is slow and ponderous and different than before and the most beautiful thing you’ve ever heard, and his eyes blink open at you.

He gives you a bloody smile, his eyes impossible soft. “Hey, big bad. I knew you could fix me.”

~*~

Stiles died on a Wednesday.

Six weeks later, on a Friday, he woke up.

~*~

You hit your knees, sobbing, finally, _finally_ , and his heartbeat echoes in your ears as you finally fall apart.

 

**Author's Note:**

> WARNINGS:  
> Stiles is killed.  
> Peter is very not ok with that.  
> Scott is a shitty alpha and worst friend.  
> Blood rituals are mentioned.  
> Suicide is planned by Peter if he doesn't succeed.
> 
> I might add a second chapter focusing on Stiles' return in the future, but for now, this is finished.


End file.
